Video conferencing is increasingly being adopted by many aged and community care organisations to enable regular meetings and training sessions for staff, as well as for video consultations with GPs and specialists in the individual facilities.

Mr Rhodes said many smaller aged care organisations have elected to use the LifeSize software only as it's a low-cost solution, with a yearly subscription per user, and can be installed on any PC or Mac.

“It’s a very low cost solution: there is no infrastructure to purchase, no hosting, everything is done in the cloud, and the software allows multiparty calls, split screens, people can share documents, and unlike Skype it is a dedicated site and is encrypted,” he said.

The full hardware and software solution is more suitable for organisations like community care services, which often involve a head office, regional offices and staff out in the field.

LifeSize allows field staff equipped with a mobile device to dial in to a conference. It is also interoperable with Microsoft's Lync platform.

For video consults with specialists, the more sophisticated the hardware component of the LifeSize system the more detailed the image can be, Mr Rhodes said.

“Some of the top of the range models have remote camera adjustments, so that the specialist can zoom into a particular part of the patient’s body, face or eye to aid diagnosis.”

LifeSize also allows users to change from point-to-point to multi-party conferences easily.

Huon IT is also offering its new Dawn Patrol service to aged care providers, which it says is a cost-effective managed solution for 24/7 monitoring of critical issues.